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Friday, April 19, 2019

Jo Boaler and math education and inquiry learning

Jo Boaler: Math teaching is about

developing
positive attitudes towards the subject

Educational Reading Friday 20 Apr

il 2019

Easter Friday

Holidays are a
time to catch your breath and to think about how to make teaching better for
both teachers and students. Allan and I are no longer involved in teaching but
we hear enough

from teacher friends, and reading comments on Facebook, to know
that all is not well.

We both caught
an interview on Q&A with Jo Boaler (Professor of Mathematics at Stanford
University) someone both of us have long admired. To us, her short interview
about maths teaching holds an answer to educations problem in particular with
maths.

Maths has always
been a difficult area. Many teacher are

themselves not that confident and are
easily convinced to take on board any number of math schemes but sadly our
position on International Tables has steadily fallen.

It’s thus worth listening to what
Boaler has to say.

Boaler says that
current approaches leave far too manystudents with ‘maths
anxiety’ and this, in
particular, applies to girls. Her video was about ensuring students develop positive

Jo Boaler

attitudes towards maths–
or any learning area. For too
long schools have focussed on achievement and one dimensional programmes and
this has resulted in an obsessive and exhausting assessment and documentation
regime. What has been missing is not paying enough attention to student
attitudes towards maths.

When qustioneed
about the success of Asian students Boaler made some important points. The key
point underpinning Asian success is the belief by parents, teachers and
students,

that all everyone can do maths (or any area of learning). In Western
cultures, Boaler says, ability is seen as important – some people are just better at maths – and girls not so much! Western teachers also use ability grouping
while in Asian classes (as observed by Boaler) children are taught as a class
in discussion groups and only cover a few problems a lesson – they do fewer things well. As a
result positive attitudes are developed.

Bruce reflected
back to his time as a class teacher where he

determined not to use text books,
work sheets, or ability grouping – all common practice at the time.He made every attempt to make maths
both enjoyable and challenging studying with his class maths patterns,
triangular numbers, measuring, counting, tessellation,history of number, number in other cultures,
keeping rainfall data, transects in science, magic numbers,math cooking, maths and art …….. The classroom

Graph number of eed in a pod

displayed a variety
of maths activities. And maths was related, where possible, to whatever study
area the class was involved in. Bruce wanted his class to appreciate what maths
was really all about and for all to have positive attitudes towards the
subject.

Unfortunately it
didn’t work out so
well. When his students went on to Intermediate school a couple of boys came
back to tell him the teacher at the intermediate had said all the kids from his
class couldn’t do math!
Bruce asked if the boys were in ability groups. They said they were – and in the top group!! He then asked

the boys how come this was the case if students couldn’t do maths? The boys were confused and the next
day they returned with the answer‘the teacher said none of the students could use a text book!’ One of the
boys was a member of the recent tax review group!!

The next year he
introduced textbooks in the last months to avoid the issue but his students
were given the message that ‘real’ maths is
doing maths and text book are to be seen only as ‘practice’ maths.

Bruce and Allan both wish they knew about
Boaler in their teaching days.

Teaching
students learn and love maths

Facing up to the
elephant in the classroom - the mind changing ideas of Jo Boaler

‘Jo Boaler
makes two main points – maths can be a fun activity for all students but to achieve this needs
the removal of an approach based on ability grouping.The one in five currently failing in
our schools, (notwithstanding the effects of poverty) see themselves as
failures, as defined by numeracy and literacy, and the premise of this book
that this
is, in good part, to the result of the use of ability grouping. Jo Boaler’s book reports on the depressing
research to back her position on ability grouping.’

Jo Boaler
writes, ‘far too
many students hate maths. As a result adults all over the world fear maths and
avoid it at all costs…. It’s
the subject that can make them feel both helpless and stupid….Maths more than any subject has the
power to crush children’s confidence.’

To develop
developing maths understanding and an appreciation of the power of maths
through teaching maths through activities and investigations preferably
integrated with the classes current inquiry study(ies).

Teachers may
like to reflect on this when carrying out those pointless timed Numeracy
assessmenst.

‘Tying speed
with computation debilitates learners. People who struggle to complete a timed
test of math facts often experience fear, which shuts down their working
memory. This makes it all but impossible to think which reinforces the idea
that a person just can’t do math – that they are not a math person.’

‘How can
schools support students to make progress in reading and writing? To explore
this question, the project identified schools that have sustained positive achievement
in literacy over five years, and asked what they did to achieve this. The goal
was to uncover common themes which might help other schools work towards
similar lifts in literacy achievement and no mention of phonics!!!!’

‘Once the
biggest school in Taranaki, Spotswood's roll has been in slow decline for two
decades as it struggled to remain an attractive option against the city's four
single-sex high schools. More liberal and less bound by tradition than those
high schools, it is undergoing a radical transformation that could completely
change the way the school is viewed both from within and without. It is one of
just six schools in New Zealand using the progressive Disrupted programme.’

‘At the core
of science is the wonderment of inquiry. Encouraging this inquiry is how you
bring science into the classroom, transforming your kids into budding
scientists who want to discover the why’s hiding behind everyday phenomena. Luckily,
there are ways to turn your classroom into a laboratory of discovery without
fire and explosions! Here are our favourite ways to boost science in the
classroom.’

In our quest as
educators to prepare our kids to enter the world to thrive and succeed, we
constantly strive to empower them with the best aptitudes for doing so in a
rapidly-changing world. These are the abilities of independent and critical
thinking, creativity, curiosity, and the drive to learn anywhere at anytime.
Ultimately, few instructional methods accomplish this quite like inquiry-based
learning

‘Maria
Montessori is a controversial figure in education. She is considered by many to
be a true visionary, while others consider her methods to be detrimental. She
was highly critical of formalised education systems and believed they actually
obstructed children's potential to learn. She saw transmission methods of
teaching as a great travesty, and worked incessantly to create alternative
methods of education that were more child centred and which led to greater
levels of engagement with learning.’